It’s been said, “They don’t make them like they used to,” and it’s true for many appliances within our households. However, a company in search of the oldest working air conditioner held a contest and found one that has been cooling the air for more than a half a century. “If you look after something, it will look after you,” says 95-year-old Lois Kemp of Pickering, Ont. Kemp’s unit was installed back in 1974. Fifty-two years ago, she said she entered a lottery to raise funds to help pay for the building of the Olympic Stadium in Montreal and her ticket won $1,000. At the time, Kemp used some of those winnings to buy an air conditioner unit made by a company called Fedders. “I was just a teenager when it was installed,” said Steve Kemp, Lois’s son who grew up in the family home. All these years later, Steve Kemp told CTV News that he still remembers when the family got the air conditioner and doesn’t recall it ever causing problems over the past five decades. “I don’t ever recall it breaking down. It’s been there since 1974 every year we have maintained it, we covered it in the winter, and we always cleaned it in the spring and made sure its running top notch,” he said. Button’s Heating and Air Conditioning, a HVAC company in Durham Region, hosted the contest to find the oldest working air conditioning unit in the area. This is following their contest from six months ago to find the oldest working furnace in Durham Region. The company says they had 107 entries from people who said they had old air conditioners that were still functioning including units that were 41, 43, and 44 years old. But it was Kemp that had the oldest unit still pumping out cold air at 52 years old. “I came here last week to do a confirmation and it was cooling the house very well,” Nigel Charlton, of Button’s Heating and Air Conditioning, told CTV News. Winning the contest means Lois Kemp received a brand-new Daikin air conditioner, which she was grateful for and she is cautiously optimistic it will last for many years. “I hope so, I hope so,” she said. According to Charlton, it will also be more efficient and will save Kemp money. “Yes, her old air conditioner has been running for 52 years but if anything happens to it you wouldn’t be able to fix it. She now has got a new one that is quieter and a lot less trying on her energy bill,” he said. Many appliances, whether its fridges and stoves or washers and dryers, don’t last as long as they used to. Older items were simple and used heavy steel parts, meanwhile, many newer items use plastic and fragile computer boards that break more easily.
